An excellent post from White Courtesy Telephone on the reality - as opposed to the fantasy - of public versus charitable funding.
Keep in mind that total annual foundation giving in the United States is about $30 billion. By my estimate, this entire amount would be swallowed up just by the operating expenses of the 50 largest nonprofit hospitals (and there would be another 2,800 such hospitals waiting in line).* Despite the sector’s sometimes inflated sense of self, foundation giving represents only 3.5 percent of all nonprofit revenues. Re-purposing these funds—moving them, for example, from advocacy support to direct services—would have a large negative impact on the advocacy community but very little overall positive impact on nonprofit bottom lines.
I'm very much in favour of cutting public expenditure, but only when matched by a corresponding increase in the ability people to make and fund their own choices. That takes time and pretending otherwise is millenarian nonsense. Indeed it is worse - it is as dishonest as the Marxist pretence of the 'withering away of the State'.
